Mindshare's Mason Bates Named one of Business Insider's Top Ad Execs Leading the Way in Esports

Congratulations to Mason Bates, Account Director, Content+ at Mindshare—he’s been named to Business Insider’s list of 31 executives defining the future of advertising in video games and esports.

As a medium, esports and gaming has seen tremendous growth over the last couple years. But as Insider puts it, “Many corporations aren't sure how to navigate this exploding space, so a new generation of ad execs is rising — professionals with the gaming expertise and marketing backgrounds to guide advertisers through this unfamiliar territory.”

Mason is the driving force of GroupM’s gaming coalition, leading a cross-agency center of excellence to educate teams on Gaming and Esports 101 and uncovering new marketing opportunities in this vertical for clients. In his role on Mindshare’s Content+ team, he leads not just esports, but overall sports partnerships and sponsorships for clients and teams across the U.S.

Here’s what Insider had to say about Mason:

Mindshare recruited Bates because of his esports expertise, having helped orchestrate Mastercard's multi-million sponsorship of Riot Games's "League of Legends" in 2018 when he was working at the agency Rogers & Cowan.

Today, Bates works on Mindshare's branded content arm, Content+, and is currently leading work for the US Marines Corps, a Mindshare client, sponsoring the Halo Championship Series.

Bates also helped California-based convenience store chain ampm with the San Francisco Shock, an esports team owned by NRG, which included logo placement as well as branded content. For example, the Shock created an "Ask Me Anything" video series with Shock players that featured ampm's mascot.

Andrew Bones, head of sales at NRG, said he's been impressed by Bates' gaming expertise and creative experience: "Mason is someone we lean on for guidance on how we can expand the ways we work with brands within the gaming industry."

Mason’s win follows a slew of other recent honors for Mindshare leaders in 2021, including Cynopsis Media’s Rising Star Awards (Stephanie Gaynor, Managing Director, Customer Strategy), She Runs It’s Changing the Game Awards (Nicole Estebanell, North America Transformation Officer), HERoes’ Women Role Model Lists (Valerie Henniger, Managing Director, Strategic Planning), New York Women in Communications’ Matrix Awards (Amanda Richman, North America CEO), Cynopsis Media's Top Women in Media (Danielle Koffer, Chief Client Officer, U.S.), The Internationalist's Agency Innovators (Joe Maceda, Global Chief Innovation Officer), Business Insider's list of ad execs leading the way in a privacy-centric world (Shane McAndrew, Global Chief Data Strategy Officer), and more.